Brine's are great for birds, It's just the amount of salt and the amount of time they tell you. I always use half the salt of any recipe and 3 hours or so, but using a good brine helps from the meat oxziding and drying out.
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Jeff, I find the actual seal on something sealed as well the job you did on
YOUR unit to be OVER-rated. A perfect seal sure won't HURT, but I think
you will be fine with what you have now. GET SMOKING! My long form
grill/smoker leaks like a sieve and still cranks out great Q.
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My first turkey. A 20 pounder I smoked on vacation. I let it brine for 24 hours in 1/2 cup salt per gallon of water brine. Ended up needing 4 gallons of water to cover it. Let it brine in a cooler with ice. I rubbed it down with my bird rub then smoked her at 250-275F for about 5 hours until the breast read 180F and the joints were all loose. It was so juicy and tasted great! The leg was a meal in itself. My wife made a large bowl of turkey salad with a breast and a thigh. It was awesome, too. I'll definitely do it again when I've got a crowd big enough to handle it.

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MAN, I need to go to Kroeeger to get some ribs.....baby backs and beef backs are on sale
this week, by the time you scan you card, they are half price. I was paying about 5-6 bucks a rack
for beef back ribs and about 6-7 for BBRs. I have 8 racks in the freezer and think, now that they all FIT,
I should go back and get some to cook up fresh tomorrow night. What a great idea, although I may go
to Hot Springs and see my favorite girl band play and shoot some more pics. I'd like to slather THEM with sauce.
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Said and done.........

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I have room for three more racks of these in the freezer, and I am tempted to get em, at an average of
$6.50 a rack, but sometimes I think you can get too ahead of yourself and end up with a freezer full of meat
and then somehow your freezer blows up. But I guess I will do it anyway. I have 5 racks of beef ribs and
two more BBRs for now. Man, I am thinking hard about stocking up. These were SOoooo good.
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5 Pounds of pork belly about to hit the smoker.

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So you are gonna smoke it without any kind of pre-cure? That's what I always wanted to try,
since when I cure it, it is too salty to eat after....granted I never tried the slab, can't find em.
I use the butter stick sized pieces they sell in the oriental grocery, they use it to make a REALLY
fatty looking dish where it looks basically boiled. I know its MUCH more complicated than that.
Maybe that belly was cured then washed, who knows.....Dom knows.
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Not cured.
I salted the rind overnight, seasoned it early this am, and put onto the smoker.
All my other attempts at pork belly have been done in an Asian style.
Typically cubed and served with some sort of hoisin or soy based dipping sauce.
I always cooked it at a higher temp too.
This time I'm trying to prepare them more like I would my ribs.
Smoking at 200* for 1.5 hours per pound is the plan, though I'll start checking for doneness around the 6 hour mark.
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Mmmmm Pork belly...tasty but dangerous
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THAT MUST BE WHERE i......where I got my idea to look more into that online, asian style.
'they' say its freaking delicious, but it looks like just plain old fat.....I like it rendered out in a fryng pan, lol.
Good luck, I will be waiting for the results.....I found a bunch of chicken parts at kroeger today,
3 chickens cut up, minus the breasts....its a bonanza of good eats, especially if the breast is not your
cut. I like a fried breast and that's about it. When it comes to smoking, gimme legs, thighs and wings.
Froze the thighs and bought another reduced pack of a dozen wings, plus a pork butt. The chicken turned
out to be not even CLOSE to smelling off, so I got it half off for basically a date code. This is gonna make for
some excellent photos!

OH, the issue WAS, I went to the Kroeger in my home area, and the sale pork and beef ribs were NOT
onsale. I was very confused. So maybe tomorrow after I hit the zoo for a photo safari, I will go to
the store close to my work and grab a few more racks of each. Half price is too good to pass up, period.
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Just tossed on a rack of St. Louis ribs.
Rubbed down with Sweet Rub.

Marinated chicken breasts going on later.

Time for a beer.
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I am almost done. The big Butt is on the smoker, needs to be foiled. But MAN, what
Chicken!
Not MUCH worried about the chicken juice dripping onto the pork, hell, its bad either way, lol.
The butt has SO MANY more hours to cook, those chiken juice gremlins are gonna be long dead.

Spent the later bits of time smoking a great cigar, I THINK courtesy of NEENS. Illusione 888.

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Finishing the chicken...MUST crisp the skin for maximum deliciousity. We already discussed rubber skin
on this forum last week, lol

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this is porm
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you guys know how to make a man hate his diet... :-)
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I forgot to take finished pics, but based on the feedback from Bigash and Blak Smyth, and the fact that there were zero leftovers, the pork belly was a hit.
Salting the rind was a bad idea.
Or maybe covering the salted rind with seasoning was the bad idea?
Either way, the rind didn't crisp up the way I intended, and was way too salty for my taste.
Once removed though, the excess salt went with it, and the rest was good eatin'!
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My mistake, I thought your experiment was for bacon. That was why I thought it needed a cure.
If you were just smoking it to eat, ehh, I could see why you cooked it rather than smoked it really low.
Finished my butt finally, pulled it and froze it for my trip to the NC mountains this month.
All in all it was a super-smoker, buster-a55er weekend. Ton of yard work, even tore a playhouse down,
without Graham Parker's help.
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The butt after foiling and crisping for another hour

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Got a 15# packer brisket
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And a rack of St Louie ribs....
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All trimmed up and rubbed down with some black and white ready to go. Figure a 2:30am start time for the brisket and 12:00pm start time for the ribs. All should be rested and ready to slice around 4 or 5pm Tuesday. Will try and take some smoker pix but its gonna be awful dark lmao. Been awhile since I sparked up the smoker but after my Franklin's BBQ trip I feel obligated to show myself I can still kick ass and take names on my smokemaster smoker! 30$ for the brisket and another 10$ for the ribs....no lines...and 10 kegs on tap = I win lol.

Probably throw some fresh gulf shrimp and beef fajitas on the firebox coals for dinner tonight since the post oak will already be burning :-)

Happy meatgasam Monday!

Mikes
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I hope people line up to grab that last bite....
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That butt looks like it is ready amigo! Yum
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